Manitoba corrections facilities left scrambling as COVID arrived: documents

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This article was published 11/03/2022 (1293 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

All nine provincial jails and correctional facilities started running critically low on toilet paper and medical supplies just a week after the first case of COVID-19 reached Manitoba in March 2020.

Those details were revealed in hundreds of pages of newly released government records which paint a picture of pandemic procedures and problems in Manitoba jails over the past two years.

The documents, along with thousands of other records from the federal government and every province and territory in Canada, were obtained through access to information and freedom of information requests filed by Prison Pandemic Partnership researchers, led by University of Winnipeg associate criminal justice Prof. Kevin Walby.

“One of the big things for me… It shows in the beginning, Manitoba was really scrambling, like every other jurisdiction, so much so that they couldn’t get some very basic supplies for the prisoners, let alone PPE — they couldn’t get soap or toilet paper for prisoners, let alone masks and face shields,” Walby told the Free Press on Friday, noting it appears the department caught up after a few months.

Another standout in the records for Walby was the release of inmates in the first wave of the pandemic, which didn’t appear to happen in subsequent waves.

“Manitoba did release some prisoners, about a dozen a day throughout April and May of 2020, (as part of) the strategy to manage population levels and prevent COVID transmission,” he said.

“They showed they can de-carcerate, they showed they can reduce jail, prison populations, that we don’t need to throw so many people behind bars. We can have different ways of working on sentences in the community.”

The slowing of prisoner releases later in the pandemic showed corrections agencies across the country didn’t learn the lesson “that was right there in front of them,” Walby said.

“They didn’t do that in the subsequent waves and then we saw 26,000 COVID cases behind bars in Canada and 6,000 cases for workers and a transmission and infection rate six times higher than the general population,” he said.

Walby also runs the U of W’s Centre for Access to Information and Justice, which uses public records laws for public interest research.

The wider pandemic papers research team was motivated to create the database for three main reasons: information disclosure for the families and friends of people in jails and prisons; open access to research; and as an audit of freedom of information legislation nationwide, he said.

“We sent the exact same requests to every single jurisdiction, and you can see some of the jurisdictions did a pretty good job of responding and some of them just did terribly — like Alberta really demonstrated they have no interest in freedom of information,” said Walby, who was pleased with the way Manitoba responded.

“I was almost kind of surprised, because sometimes I’ve had some difficulties using FOI in the province.”

As Manitoba tensely waited for the pandemic to begin in earnest in early 2020, inmate programming was cancelled on March 18, while access to recreation was limited to small groups. No one was allowed to visit facilities, apart from legal services.

By March 24 — 12 days after the first case was confirmed in the province — corrections received hand sanitizer from an alcohol distillery. By March 25, in light of shortages of critical cleaning supplies, the accommodation services division began working with the custody division on proper disinfection procedures for isolation cells for COVID-positive inmates.

All jails had supply rationing plans in place, while the department worked with alternative suppliers as countries around the globe raced to procure cleaning products and personal protective equipment.

That same day, the number of inmates in isolation in provincial corrections facilities was 18; a Manitoba Justice COVID-19 central co-ordination team status update said the number in isolation was increasing daily.

By Aug. 28, 233 inmates across the provincial system were in isolation, most of which were in the Winnipeg Remand Centre (141).

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @erik_pindera